Musings of an Incorrigible Writer

05/18/2015

Don Draper Teaches the World to Sing In Perfect Harmony

Mad Men has left the building...

SPOILER ALERT (do not read if you haven't watched the finale yet):

Todd over at Vox nailed the ending (good job, Todd), and I have to say as I was watching Don Draper meditate at Esalen surrounded by New Age hippies, with Peggy's words to his broken, lost self echoing in my head (encouraging him to come home and work on Coke) I actually gasped. I realized YUP, Todd was right, we were going to end this thing with a Coke and smile and a song.

True, I expected (like Todd) to see one last Don Draper miracle pitch. I thought we'd see Don come home. Home being NYC, and advertising, and Don being great at what Don does -- creating illusions and inventing love to sell nylons. I thought we'd see Don pick himself up and once again, shake off the dirt and grime from the hobo life and the previous night's bender and make everything shiny, and new in the dawn. Usually for Don that just meant putting on a clean white shirt and tie, and slicking down his jet black hair.

Like others, I think it's a forgone conclusion that Don did indeed return home to pitch the iconic Coke ad. But by not including a scene of Don returning home, series creator Matthew Weiner leaves the real ending to Don's story up to all of us, the viewers. We can imagine it anyway we wish, and interpret all the clues anyway we choose, rather than having a concrete conclusion force fed to us. To some, this is frustrating. They want Weiner to tell us one way or another what becomes of Don. Does he find peace, happiness and enlightenment or does he just go back to being miserable and wreaking havoc on those around him?

Leaving the ending ambiguous allows us, the audience and fans, to not only make up our own ending, but to talk and/or argue about the ending for months, if not years to come. In this age of social media, it's not enough to complete a series -- the show's creator has to give his/her fans something to mull over and dissect together. In that way, an iconic series like Mad Men becomes a powerful tool for connecting us across the great divide. It allows us, as strangers, to have conversations that feel intimate, and real, about things that are not really intimate, and completely unreal -- imaginary people, storylines, and products. TV, like advertising, is all about illusions. They create a superficial sometimes crass intimacy, by exploiting our needs and desires (to be seen, heard, and loved), and distract us from the reality of our own lives. And yet, there is magic in the way TV influences and impacts us. When done well, as it has been with Mad Men, TV brings us together (if only momentarily) around the virtual campfire to share a story that resonates with us all on varying levels, and very much makes us feel connected, and thus alive.

** And by the way, that iconic Coke ad is so powerful and moving, that dated as it is and as cynical as I am, it still creates an emotional response in me every time I see it. Intellectually, I know it's just an ad to sell Coke, but it honestly feels like something more. It somehow resonates with me, and makes me feel more hopeful.

In my own opinion, Weiner could have included a final scene with Don returning to McCann-Erickson and we'd still all be connecting on social media and arguing over whether or not Don Draper had truly found enlightenment on the hilltop at long last, or not. Some would argue Don was the same old lost soul, who just learned how to tap into the zeitgeist of the decade and exploit young people's need for love and connection into the most powerful selling tool ever. Some would say Weiner is himself a master manipulator, who tapped into our own deep-seated desires and nostalgic longings to hook us on a TV series about the past that was and wasn't as good as it seemed.

Still, it's fitting that Don Draper's story ends on a hilltop with hippies singing about THE REAL THING. Don's life has never been real, except when he was at his job creating fantasy worlds of happiness in order to sell products to consumers, filling some emptiness inside of them, that perhaps mirrored his own emptiness.

Maybe for this Don, the one who has been stripped of everything (home, family, job, purpose), sharing a Coke and a smile truly is the only real thing in life. Maybe for the rest of us, watching Don struggle in his imaginary world has been real too. If only on Sunday nights...